The right's next target: Science
xerxes @ Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:56 pm
Saw an interesting article on the Guardian today..(sorry it's a little long)
$1:
Published on Monday, February 7, 2005 by the Guardian/UK
Religious Right Fights Science for the Heart of America
Creationists Take Their Challenge to Evolution Theory into the Classroom
by Suzanne Goldenberg in Kansas City
Al Frisby has spent the better part of his life in rooms filled with rebellious teenagers, but the last years have been particularly trying for the high school biology teacher. He has met parents who want him to teach that God created Eve out of Adam's rib, and then then adjusted the chromosomes to make her a woman, and who insist that Noah invited dinosaurs aboard the ark. And it is getting more difficult to keep such talk out of the classroom.
"Somewhere along the line, the students have been told the theory of evolution is not valid," he said. "In the last few years, I've had students question my teaching about cell classification and genetics, and there have been a number of comments from students saying: 'Didn't God do that'?" In Kansas, the geographical centre of America, the heart of the American heartland, the state-approved answer might soon be Yes. In the coming weeks, state educators will decide on proposed curriculum changes for high school science put forward by subscribers to the notion of "intelligent design", a modern version of creationism. If the religious right has its way, and it is a powerful force in Kansas, high school science teachers could be teaching creationist material by next September, charting an important victory in America's modern-day revolt against evolutionary science.
Legal debate
Similar classroom confrontations between God and science are under way in 17 states, according to the National Centre for Science Education. In Missouri, state legislators are drafting a bill laying down that science texts contain a chapter on so-called alternative theories to evolution. Textbooks in Arkansas and Alabama contain disclaimers on evolution, and in a Wisconsin school district, teachers are required to instruct their students in the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory". Last month, a judge in Georgia ordered a school district to remove stickers on school textbooks that warned: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."
For the conservative forces engaged in the struggle for America's soul, the true battleground is public education, the laboratory of the next generation, and an opportunity for the religious right to effect lasting change on popular culture. Officially, the teaching of creationism has been outlawed since 1987 when the supreme court ruled that the inclusion of religious material in science classes in public teaching was unconstitutional. In recent years, however, opponents of evolution have regrouped, challenging science education with the doctrine of "intelligent design" which has been carefully stripped of all references to God and religion. Unlike traditional creationism, which posits that God created the earth in six days, proponents of intelligent design assert that the workings of this planet are too complex to be ascribed to evolution. There must have been a designer working to a plan - that is, a creator.
In their campaign to persuade parents in Kansas to welcome the new version of creationism into the classroom, subscribers to intelligent design have appealed to a sense of fair play, arguing that it would be in their children's interest to be exposed to all schools of thought on the earth's origins. "We are looking for science standards that would be more informative, that would open the discussion about origins, rather than close it," said John Calvert, founder of the Intelligent Design network, the prime mover in the campaign to discredit the teaching of evolution in Kansas.
Other supporters of intelligent design go further, saying evolution is as much an article of faith as creationism. "Certainly there are clear religious implications," said William Harris, a research biochemist and co-founder of the design network in Kansas. "There are creation myths on both sides. Which one do you teach?" For Mr. Harris, an expert on fish oils and prevention of heart disease at the premier teaching hospital in Kansas City, the very premise of evolution was intolerable. He describes his conversion as a graduate student many years ago almost as an epiphany. "It hit me that if monkeys are supposed to be so close to us as relatives then what explains the incredible gap between monkeys and humans. I had a realisation that there was a vast chasm between the two types of animals, and the standard explanation just didn't fit."
Other scientists on the school board's advisory committee see no clash in values between religion and science. "Prominent conservative Christians, evangelical Christians, have found no inherent conflict between an evolutionary understanding of the history of life, and an orthodox understanding of the theology of creation," said Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University, who describes himself as a practising Christian.
But in Kansas, as in the rest of America, it would seem a slim majority continue to believe God created the heaven and the earth. During the past five years, subscribers to intelligent design have assembled a roster of influential supporters in the state, including a smattering of people with PhDs, such as Mr Harris, to lend their cause a veneer of scientific credibility. When conservative Republicans took control of the Kansas state school board last November, the creationists seized their chance, installing supporters on the committee reviewing the high school science curriculum.
The suggested changes under consideration seem innocuous at first. "A minor addition makes it clear that evolution is a theory and not a fact," says the proposed revision to the 8th grade science standard. However, Jack Krebs, a high school maths teacher on the committee drafting the new standards, argues that the campaign against evolution amounts to a stealth assault on the entire body of scientific thought. "There are two planes where they are attacking. One is evolution, and one is science itself," he said.
"They believe that the naturalistic bias of science is in fact atheistic, and that if we don't change science, we can't believe in God. And so this is really an attack on all of science. Evolution is just the weak link."
It would certainly seem so in Kansas. At the first of a series of public hearings on the new course material, the audience was equally split between the defenders of established science, and the anti-evolution rebels. The breakdown has educators worried. With the religious right now in control of the Kansas state school board, the circumstances favour the creationists.
In a crowded high school auditorium, biology teachers, mathematicians, a veterinarian, and a high school student made passionate speeches on the need for cold, scientific detachment, and the damage that would be done to the state's reputation and biotechnology industry if Kansas became known as a haven for creationists. They were countered by John James, who warned that the teaching of evolution led to nihilism, and to the gates of Auschwitz. "Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?" he asked. But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. "I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?" he thundered.
Science teachers believe that the genteel questioning of the intelligent design movements masks a larger project to discredit an entire body of rational thought. If the Kansas state school board allows science teachers to question evolution, where will it stop? Will religious teachers bring their beliefs into the classroom?
"They are trying to create a climate where anything an individual teacher wants to include in science class can be considered science," said Harry McDonald, a retired biology teacher and president of Kansas Citizens for Science Education. "They want to redefine science."
Religious right
Young Earth creationism
God created the Earth, and all the species on it, in six days, 6,000 years ago
Old Earth creationism
The Earth is 4.5bn years old, but God created each living organism on the planet, although not necessarily in six days
Intelligent design
Emerged as a theory in 1989. Maintains that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and that Earth's complexity can be explained only by the idea of an intelligent designer - or a creator
Religious Right Fights Science for the Heart of America
Creationists Take Their Challenge to Evolution Theory into the Classroom
by Suzanne Goldenberg in Kansas City
Al Frisby has spent the better part of his life in rooms filled with rebellious teenagers, but the last years have been particularly trying for the high school biology teacher. He has met parents who want him to teach that God created Eve out of Adam's rib, and then then adjusted the chromosomes to make her a woman, and who insist that Noah invited dinosaurs aboard the ark. And it is getting more difficult to keep such talk out of the classroom.
"Somewhere along the line, the students have been told the theory of evolution is not valid," he said. "In the last few years, I've had students question my teaching about cell classification and genetics, and there have been a number of comments from students saying: 'Didn't God do that'?" In Kansas, the geographical centre of America, the heart of the American heartland, the state-approved answer might soon be Yes. In the coming weeks, state educators will decide on proposed curriculum changes for high school science put forward by subscribers to the notion of "intelligent design", a modern version of creationism. If the religious right has its way, and it is a powerful force in Kansas, high school science teachers could be teaching creationist material by next September, charting an important victory in America's modern-day revolt against evolutionary science.
Legal debate
Similar classroom confrontations between God and science are under way in 17 states, according to the National Centre for Science Education. In Missouri, state legislators are drafting a bill laying down that science texts contain a chapter on so-called alternative theories to evolution. Textbooks in Arkansas and Alabama contain disclaimers on evolution, and in a Wisconsin school district, teachers are required to instruct their students in the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory". Last month, a judge in Georgia ordered a school district to remove stickers on school textbooks that warned: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."
For the conservative forces engaged in the struggle for America's soul, the true battleground is public education, the laboratory of the next generation, and an opportunity for the religious right to effect lasting change on popular culture. Officially, the teaching of creationism has been outlawed since 1987 when the supreme court ruled that the inclusion of religious material in science classes in public teaching was unconstitutional. In recent years, however, opponents of evolution have regrouped, challenging science education with the doctrine of "intelligent design" which has been carefully stripped of all references to God and religion. Unlike traditional creationism, which posits that God created the earth in six days, proponents of intelligent design assert that the workings of this planet are too complex to be ascribed to evolution. There must have been a designer working to a plan - that is, a creator.
In their campaign to persuade parents in Kansas to welcome the new version of creationism into the classroom, subscribers to intelligent design have appealed to a sense of fair play, arguing that it would be in their children's interest to be exposed to all schools of thought on the earth's origins. "We are looking for science standards that would be more informative, that would open the discussion about origins, rather than close it," said John Calvert, founder of the Intelligent Design network, the prime mover in the campaign to discredit the teaching of evolution in Kansas.
Other supporters of intelligent design go further, saying evolution is as much an article of faith as creationism. "Certainly there are clear religious implications," said William Harris, a research biochemist and co-founder of the design network in Kansas. "There are creation myths on both sides. Which one do you teach?" For Mr. Harris, an expert on fish oils and prevention of heart disease at the premier teaching hospital in Kansas City, the very premise of evolution was intolerable. He describes his conversion as a graduate student many years ago almost as an epiphany. "It hit me that if monkeys are supposed to be so close to us as relatives then what explains the incredible gap between monkeys and humans. I had a realisation that there was a vast chasm between the two types of animals, and the standard explanation just didn't fit."
Other scientists on the school board's advisory committee see no clash in values between religion and science. "Prominent conservative Christians, evangelical Christians, have found no inherent conflict between an evolutionary understanding of the history of life, and an orthodox understanding of the theology of creation," said Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University, who describes himself as a practising Christian.
But in Kansas, as in the rest of America, it would seem a slim majority continue to believe God created the heaven and the earth. During the past five years, subscribers to intelligent design have assembled a roster of influential supporters in the state, including a smattering of people with PhDs, such as Mr Harris, to lend their cause a veneer of scientific credibility. When conservative Republicans took control of the Kansas state school board last November, the creationists seized their chance, installing supporters on the committee reviewing the high school science curriculum.
The suggested changes under consideration seem innocuous at first. "A minor addition makes it clear that evolution is a theory and not a fact," says the proposed revision to the 8th grade science standard. However, Jack Krebs, a high school maths teacher on the committee drafting the new standards, argues that the campaign against evolution amounts to a stealth assault on the entire body of scientific thought. "There are two planes where they are attacking. One is evolution, and one is science itself," he said.
"They believe that the naturalistic bias of science is in fact atheistic, and that if we don't change science, we can't believe in God. And so this is really an attack on all of science. Evolution is just the weak link."
It would certainly seem so in Kansas. At the first of a series of public hearings on the new course material, the audience was equally split between the defenders of established science, and the anti-evolution rebels. The breakdown has educators worried. With the religious right now in control of the Kansas state school board, the circumstances favour the creationists.
In a crowded high school auditorium, biology teachers, mathematicians, a veterinarian, and a high school student made passionate speeches on the need for cold, scientific detachment, and the damage that would be done to the state's reputation and biotechnology industry if Kansas became known as a haven for creationists. They were countered by John James, who warned that the teaching of evolution led to nihilism, and to the gates of Auschwitz. "Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?" he asked. But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. "I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?" he thundered.
Science teachers believe that the genteel questioning of the intelligent design movements masks a larger project to discredit an entire body of rational thought. If the Kansas state school board allows science teachers to question evolution, where will it stop? Will religious teachers bring their beliefs into the classroom?
"They are trying to create a climate where anything an individual teacher wants to include in science class can be considered science," said Harry McDonald, a retired biology teacher and president of Kansas Citizens for Science Education. "They want to redefine science."
Religious right
Young Earth creationism
God created the Earth, and all the species on it, in six days, 6,000 years ago
Old Earth creationism
The Earth is 4.5bn years old, but God created each living organism on the planet, although not necessarily in six days
Intelligent design
Emerged as a theory in 1989. Maintains that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and that Earth's complexity can be explained only by the idea of an intelligent designer - or a creator
And Americans wonder why thier students are getting dumber...
These people are amazing. It's either their way or the highway to hell. If I was a teacher (and some day I hope to be) and soneone told me to teach creationism I would spaz on them something fierce.
smokinjoe @ Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:47 pm
This is an issue that I am thinking about. My daughter is in a catholic school. She is in grade one and just starting to learn the bible. How do you explain all of this to a 6 yr old. I was almost shot when I told her that god was not necesarly a man. Granny was very mad. I went to a catholic grade school but said fuck this when it was time to get confirmed. I could'nt go to a catholic high school and that was my whole plan. I may have to sit the kid down and have a heart to heart with her. "God is an idea""The bible was wrote by men at a time when women had no rights""fact or fiction""Informative or controlling" These are statements I'll have to make to her. She's pretty cool so I don't think it'll worp her mind.
Rev_Blair @ Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:57 pm
Science has always been the target of these born-again goof-balls. An educated population is less likely to send money to preachers. Actually the better educated a population, the less likely they are to go to church at all. That scares the hell out of these people who so deserately need to control others.
We've got our share of these luddite nut-bars too though. Stockwell Day comes to mind. Stephen Harper refuses to say what he believes, so the smart money is on him thinking the Flintsones was a documentary.
hormel26c @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 1:43 pm
And to add to this, just in case you missed the coded message in Dubya's "No Child Left Behind"...
$1:
'I'm Ready to Die'
Fundamentalist Christianity Instills in Millions of American Followers a Depressing-and Dangerous-Nihilism
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Six weeks ago, a young man sat down next to an older woman waiting for him and stated grimly, "I don't care. That's it. He can say what he wants. As for me, I'm ready to die".
Referring several times to nearby CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network), he laid a Bible on the table at the Norfolk coffee shop where I was writing a book proposal. I felt badly for him; he seemed to have an incurable disease. The woman mumbled something.
He quickly retorted, "I don't care what he said. I won't work with him." His voice was clipped as he emphasized his refusal to negotiate with a particular coworker.
The older woman sat holding her coffee, rarely even sipping it, with a hopeless-looking expression on her face. She showed no sympathy, looking at him as if she knew what he was about to say. Now I doubted that he was dying of a terminal illness.
The slender dark-haired 20-something, looked straight ahead without touching his coffee. The older lady asked quietly, "Don't you think that maybe-"
He cut her off: "Look, the end is coming. I know that and you know that. You've seen the signs. I just don't care about this guy, I don't care what he says. The end is coming very soon. None of this is going to matter." For the first time showing emotion, he added angrily, "I'm ready to die-I'm ready to go today, right now!"
I immediately recognized this as rapture talk. This young man does have an incurable disease, but it's spiritual, not physical: It's called fundamentalism (aka "millennialism"), the kind of Christianity to which Bush and his "conservative" advisers ascribe.
Early last year, I overheard another conversation that made me tremble for this nation under Bush and his Dobsonian advisers. This one, however, brought back tragicomic memories of a childhood spent in fundamentalist churches.
No longer hearing that depressing conversation, images of a scary old barn flooded my mind. I was 14, and was riding with our youth group to a dark field out in the middle of nowhere. It was summer but dark, so it must have been 8:30 p.m. or later.
As we got out of our cars, we were taken to a huge barn--to this day I don't know what kind of barn, because it had no farm equipment in it--and seated in folding chairs facing a large pull-down screen. We giggled as usual, flirting and complaining about missing our favorite TV shows as the adults fiddled with the film projector. But we knew the score: when the film started, we were to be absolutely quiet and "reverent".
After a few words of prayer and a reading from Revelations, the youth director started the film. I remember vividly the opening scene: a boy of about 13 ("the age of accountability") is walking home from school. As he enters the house, he finds it empty.
"Mom? Mom!", the boy calls, but she doesn't answer. He shrugs and goes to the kitchen to get his own snack, looking annoyed. Then the music shifts to an ominous minor key, horror-movie style, and he begins to search the house. Holding a sandwich, he races through the house calling desperately, "Mom! Mom! Where are you?!"
Then the narrator explains--Mom has been raptured up into the heavens to be with God, leaving the boy bereft to regret his sinful ways, then burn in hell for all eternity.
Conservative Christianity's Legalistic Loopholes: Repent then Die
There were other scenes, like the one where an elderly couple is carrying groceries in the house when the man cries out, grabs his chest, and falls on the sidewalk. His wife rushes inside to call the ambulance. The EMTs put him on the stretcher and start for the door.
But before they can take him to the hospital, the man's saintly wife delays them in order to pray with him, urging him to repent now while there's still time. She convinces him to repent of his drinking, cussing and sinful lifestyle, urging him to accept Jesus as his personal savior and repeat John 3:16. He does so, then dies. As they take his body away she's kind of sad, but smiles gratefully towards the ceiling: He's on his way to heaven.
The message was clear: You can rape, murder, torture prisoners, bomb civilians, order executions, cut social programs for the poor, persecute gays, feminists, or any racial group you choose, and do anything you please for 75 years or more, then simply whisper a few magic words for a first-class seat in heaven, right next to Mother Teresa.
I rejected this as contrary to Jesus' teachings, seeing through the scare tactics used by eternally sweating preachers who wiped their sweaty foreheads, weary night after weary night, with the obligatory handkerchief. Without exception, the revivalists pounded the longsuffering wooden pulpit, demanding, "Are you ready to die right now?"
The "good folks" would nod and answer, "Amen!" but certain recalcitrant husbands and teenagers refused to do so. As punishment for their defiance, the evangelists would walk down the aisle and stand right next to the offending party, staring and slapping an open Bible while describing in lurid detail how it feels to be "licked with the flames of hell".
Not every teen was immune to rapture threats. Some kids took them seriously and developed the kind of nihilism--the "readiness for death" masking despair borne of terror-displayed by the young man who "didn't care" because "the end is coming". One boy developed such intense fears of being left behind in the coming rapture that he stopped playing with neighborhood friends (they could lead him to sin) and stayed safely in his bedroom, rocking and reading the Bible for hours every day after school.
This boy and the other more "obedient" kids prayed constantly, growing increasingly paranoid about committing even the most minor "sins", e.g., not reading the scriptures before and after school, inadvertently leaving someone out of bedtime prayers, failing to ask a classmate if Jesus was his or her personal savior, etc. These kids worried that some day they'd come home to find their parents gone. GONE. Forever.
Fighting for Purity
For a child raised in fundamentalist "conservative" churches, there is no safe haven. Everyone is a potential threat, not just of contamination of oneself--to burn for all eternity--but of causing the child to suffer the more tangible threat of losing his or her parents, siblings, and grandparents.
The rapture film and others like it strike at the very core of normal childhood needs for security and parental love. Those who succumbed to the rapture threats grew up to be legalistic Christians, paranoid and ever on the watch for sinful people. Contamination by Christians of other denominations was to be avoided at all costs. Imagine, then, how much greater the fear of Catholics (considered "a cult", not "Christian" by many fundamentalists), Jews, Muslims, and other "sinful" citizens. In Purity We Trust.
Google "purity" with names of Bush's conservative advisers and "think tank" writers: Notice how they promote this fearsome concept. Hitler knew the power of "purity", and so do today's fundamentalists: Avoid contamination by whatever means necessary.
To make a pure nation you have to break a few heads. Sure, people will die: the enemy, "our troops", maybe you, too. But it will have been worth it if even one soul is saved. Anyway, your choice is stark: Die today (be sure to repent first) or burn for all eternity. Be "ready to die" at every moment-because the end is coming. As Freddy Mercury sang so sadly, "nothing really matters anymore".
In our brave new fundamentalist nation, it really doesn't matter anymore how many people you kill, or how much of the earth's environment you destroy. What matters is this and only this: If you don't want to come home one day to an empty house and suffer in the lake of fire for all eternity, you'd better hate all the right people, bomb all the right countries, and back your rapture-ready president in whatever hare-brained scheme he comes up with next.
Life itself is a snare, a temptation of the flesh. Your safest bet is to repent and then die young, before you're Left Behind.
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst is a clinical psychologist, author of 'Jesus on Parenting: 10 Essential Principles That Will Transform Your Family' (2004) and coauthor of 'The Nonviolent Christian Parent' (2004). She writes the column, 'Democracy, Faith and Values: Because You Shouldn't Have to Choose Just One'.
Fundamentalist Christianity Instills in Millions of American Followers a Depressing-and Dangerous-Nihilism
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Six weeks ago, a young man sat down next to an older woman waiting for him and stated grimly, "I don't care. That's it. He can say what he wants. As for me, I'm ready to die".
Referring several times to nearby CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network), he laid a Bible on the table at the Norfolk coffee shop where I was writing a book proposal. I felt badly for him; he seemed to have an incurable disease. The woman mumbled something.
He quickly retorted, "I don't care what he said. I won't work with him." His voice was clipped as he emphasized his refusal to negotiate with a particular coworker.
The older woman sat holding her coffee, rarely even sipping it, with a hopeless-looking expression on her face. She showed no sympathy, looking at him as if she knew what he was about to say. Now I doubted that he was dying of a terminal illness.
The slender dark-haired 20-something, looked straight ahead without touching his coffee. The older lady asked quietly, "Don't you think that maybe-"
He cut her off: "Look, the end is coming. I know that and you know that. You've seen the signs. I just don't care about this guy, I don't care what he says. The end is coming very soon. None of this is going to matter." For the first time showing emotion, he added angrily, "I'm ready to die-I'm ready to go today, right now!"
I immediately recognized this as rapture talk. This young man does have an incurable disease, but it's spiritual, not physical: It's called fundamentalism (aka "millennialism"), the kind of Christianity to which Bush and his "conservative" advisers ascribe.
Early last year, I overheard another conversation that made me tremble for this nation under Bush and his Dobsonian advisers. This one, however, brought back tragicomic memories of a childhood spent in fundamentalist churches.
No longer hearing that depressing conversation, images of a scary old barn flooded my mind. I was 14, and was riding with our youth group to a dark field out in the middle of nowhere. It was summer but dark, so it must have been 8:30 p.m. or later.
As we got out of our cars, we were taken to a huge barn--to this day I don't know what kind of barn, because it had no farm equipment in it--and seated in folding chairs facing a large pull-down screen. We giggled as usual, flirting and complaining about missing our favorite TV shows as the adults fiddled with the film projector. But we knew the score: when the film started, we were to be absolutely quiet and "reverent".
After a few words of prayer and a reading from Revelations, the youth director started the film. I remember vividly the opening scene: a boy of about 13 ("the age of accountability") is walking home from school. As he enters the house, he finds it empty.
"Mom? Mom!", the boy calls, but she doesn't answer. He shrugs and goes to the kitchen to get his own snack, looking annoyed. Then the music shifts to an ominous minor key, horror-movie style, and he begins to search the house. Holding a sandwich, he races through the house calling desperately, "Mom! Mom! Where are you?!"
Then the narrator explains--Mom has been raptured up into the heavens to be with God, leaving the boy bereft to regret his sinful ways, then burn in hell for all eternity.
Conservative Christianity's Legalistic Loopholes: Repent then Die
There were other scenes, like the one where an elderly couple is carrying groceries in the house when the man cries out, grabs his chest, and falls on the sidewalk. His wife rushes inside to call the ambulance. The EMTs put him on the stretcher and start for the door.
But before they can take him to the hospital, the man's saintly wife delays them in order to pray with him, urging him to repent now while there's still time. She convinces him to repent of his drinking, cussing and sinful lifestyle, urging him to accept Jesus as his personal savior and repeat John 3:16. He does so, then dies. As they take his body away she's kind of sad, but smiles gratefully towards the ceiling: He's on his way to heaven.
The message was clear: You can rape, murder, torture prisoners, bomb civilians, order executions, cut social programs for the poor, persecute gays, feminists, or any racial group you choose, and do anything you please for 75 years or more, then simply whisper a few magic words for a first-class seat in heaven, right next to Mother Teresa.
I rejected this as contrary to Jesus' teachings, seeing through the scare tactics used by eternally sweating preachers who wiped their sweaty foreheads, weary night after weary night, with the obligatory handkerchief. Without exception, the revivalists pounded the longsuffering wooden pulpit, demanding, "Are you ready to die right now?"
The "good folks" would nod and answer, "Amen!" but certain recalcitrant husbands and teenagers refused to do so. As punishment for their defiance, the evangelists would walk down the aisle and stand right next to the offending party, staring and slapping an open Bible while describing in lurid detail how it feels to be "licked with the flames of hell".
Not every teen was immune to rapture threats. Some kids took them seriously and developed the kind of nihilism--the "readiness for death" masking despair borne of terror-displayed by the young man who "didn't care" because "the end is coming". One boy developed such intense fears of being left behind in the coming rapture that he stopped playing with neighborhood friends (they could lead him to sin) and stayed safely in his bedroom, rocking and reading the Bible for hours every day after school.
This boy and the other more "obedient" kids prayed constantly, growing increasingly paranoid about committing even the most minor "sins", e.g., not reading the scriptures before and after school, inadvertently leaving someone out of bedtime prayers, failing to ask a classmate if Jesus was his or her personal savior, etc. These kids worried that some day they'd come home to find their parents gone. GONE. Forever.
Fighting for Purity
For a child raised in fundamentalist "conservative" churches, there is no safe haven. Everyone is a potential threat, not just of contamination of oneself--to burn for all eternity--but of causing the child to suffer the more tangible threat of losing his or her parents, siblings, and grandparents.
The rapture film and others like it strike at the very core of normal childhood needs for security and parental love. Those who succumbed to the rapture threats grew up to be legalistic Christians, paranoid and ever on the watch for sinful people. Contamination by Christians of other denominations was to be avoided at all costs. Imagine, then, how much greater the fear of Catholics (considered "a cult", not "Christian" by many fundamentalists), Jews, Muslims, and other "sinful" citizens. In Purity We Trust.
Google "purity" with names of Bush's conservative advisers and "think tank" writers: Notice how they promote this fearsome concept. Hitler knew the power of "purity", and so do today's fundamentalists: Avoid contamination by whatever means necessary.
To make a pure nation you have to break a few heads. Sure, people will die: the enemy, "our troops", maybe you, too. But it will have been worth it if even one soul is saved. Anyway, your choice is stark: Die today (be sure to repent first) or burn for all eternity. Be "ready to die" at every moment-because the end is coming. As Freddy Mercury sang so sadly, "nothing really matters anymore".
In our brave new fundamentalist nation, it really doesn't matter anymore how many people you kill, or how much of the earth's environment you destroy. What matters is this and only this: If you don't want to come home one day to an empty house and suffer in the lake of fire for all eternity, you'd better hate all the right people, bomb all the right countries, and back your rapture-ready president in whatever hare-brained scheme he comes up with next.
Life itself is a snare, a temptation of the flesh. Your safest bet is to repent and then die young, before you're Left Behind.
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst is a clinical psychologist, author of 'Jesus on Parenting: 10 Essential Principles That Will Transform Your Family' (2004) and coauthor of 'The Nonviolent Christian Parent' (2004). She writes the column, 'Democracy, Faith and Values: Because You Shouldn't Have to Choose Just One'.
Raven23 @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:35 pm
"countered by John James, who warned that the teaching of evolution led to nihilism, and to the gates of Auschwitz. "Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?" he asked. But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. "I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?" he thundered"
I can't even wrap my head around how few braincells are actually working when people say things like that. I makes me feel like there still are cave men living among us.
Evolution = Nazism? Ludacris! How about this, a Jewish teacher in a public school, forced to teach Mr. James' 'intelligent design creationist' ideas to his/her students? How could you possibly monitor the changes in species populations and why they are or arent surviving in specific habitats and ect. ect. if you believe that "well... the intelligent designer [GOD] created them so it just is the way it is" . How is an athiest, or spiritual or bhuddist or hindu or muslim or whatever type of teacher and beliefs supposed to teach basically christian creationism to the IMPRESSIONABLE minds of school children? Why not teach them that an 8 armed god created the world... or that when you deeply meditate you can become enlightened.. or that they should pray to mecca every few hours? Religion has NO place in schools, and if it ever did, it should be studied as a whole....covering many religions.. and describing how these are the ways man has always been curioius as to the origins of self.
Blah... rant over.
Telkwa @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:09 pm
It's flat earth all over again. There are a lot of people who do not understand basic technologies, let alone science. When you watch some people with a hammer or a pair of scissors or trying to change a tire you have to shake your head. These people need an answer for basic questions, so they use God as the all purpose solution. It's downright scary. One would think that evolution would have weeded these people out by now.
Robair @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:51 pm
Telkwa Telkwa:
One would think that evolution would have weeded these people out by now.
I think the lack of understanding when it comes to condom use has actually had the opposite effect.
Hell, the US is now comprised of about 53% of these people.
xerxes @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:41 pm
You have to remember Telkwa, that most ignorance is willful.
I read this great quote the other day from Stephen King of all people that applies perfectly to what people have been saying here:
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
---
These are probably the same people that think you can get AIDS through tears or that abortions cause breast cancer or mental disorders.
Lone @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:36 pm
damn far right noe-nazis trying to take out science
smokinjoe @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:46 pm
I was raised catholic. Well I went to a catholic school so thats close enough. There was a time when all that shit made sense At ten I even thought that I should be a priest. But then a sort of logic took over. Somehow my belifes fell apart. It was cool. Picture this I'm like 11 sittin in the corner scared shitless because I thought what if all that religious shit is true then even questioning it was sending me to hell. It got pretty tense at 15 when I stared experimenting with drugs. You can really wrap your mind around some wierd shit while smokin weed when your young. One time we thought we met an angle. wow that was fucked. Me and two buddies were sittin at a burger king takin care of a bad case of the munchies when this old homeless dude sat down at our table and started preaching to us. He just appered like as if out of no where. I cant remember what he said but it fucked us up pretty good. And then he said goodbye. Walked out and vanished. Fucked with our minds. This started off a world wind of experimenting and "talkin deep" I sensed things were getting to far when me and a buddy pulled knives on each other to give each other the gift of the after life. Now thats friends. I miss the good old days.
Rev_Blair @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:23 pm
Ah, Catholic school. I used to have biology right before Christian Ethics (they thought "catechism" wasn't a cool word to use anymore). It can be pretty hard to reconcile those two things. The funny thing is the Catholic Church had already accepted evolution, but a lot of the teachers (especially those old hover-nuns 
) didn't really care what the pope said.
$1:
I read this great quote the other day from Stephen King of all people that applies perfectly to what people have been saying here:
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
I've read a few of King's insights into religious mania. He seems to have dealt with it personally a few times, but he never says where or when. I find that odd considering how much of his personal life he's put on display over the years.
dgthe3 @ Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:39 pm
I am not a religious person, was not raised religiously in any way and I am an intelligent person. I think that it is possible that God created the laws of physics and nature at the time of the big bang and left things to go own their own. Yes it goes against most religious teachings but religion was ment to explain what was happening to the world in a time before modern science, it was accepted and altered to meed the beliefs of the people. Most people dissagree very strongly with me whenever i bring this stuff up and i am used to it. And it quite impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the subject matter with religious people because they think in such absolute terms, even intelligen people. Believing in religion does not make you dumb, not believing does not make you smart. Ignoring the other side of the argument is what makes you dumb, no matter what the argument is.
Robair @ Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:16 am
Science has been used both ways. There is plenty of proof regarding the life and times of Jesus.
If you want to go earlier than that, they even think they've found Noah's Ark.
That photo is of a formation way up on the side of mount Ararat, where the Bible says the Ark came to rest.
What do you think it is? The political climate in the area makes it impossible to study.
Raven23 @ Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:37 am
I could care less if they ended up finding a beached boat on a mountain that is X amount of years old. Noah could have very well had a boat? Doesn't mean he was a god-send to save the earth from peril... if god is so powerfull, why did he need the help of a mortal. Balonie
Rev_Blair @ Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:47 am
The theory I like best for the plethora of flood myths in the area is the Black Sea theory. It's based on scientific evidence that as the Black Sea formed, people had to evacute the area. As the people spread, they took their myth with them adapting it to their new lands.
The theory itself matches geologic and archaeological evidence, as well migration patterns noted by linguists and anthropologists.
It isn't likely that anybody built a huge boat though.